Make some noise.
Sankorfa, the percussion quartet who will be playing while Paul-André dances at Bishopsgate Institute, have been squeezing in time to rehearse our pieces. As is often the case, the performers wanted some time to look at our pieces and rehearse without the composers present. This is because it's always a bit of a nightmare sight-reading through a new piece with the composer there, listening and pointing out the minutiae when you're just trying to get a grasp of the whole.
So we won't hear how our pieces sound for another few days yet... and then things will probably get a bit frenzied for us again, making last-minute changes.
Personally, I have been looking all over the place for some quarter-inch tape on which to record and play the electronic-part of my piece. (It's made up of all sorts of things from thickly layered guitar-feedback to recordings of people reading from the Financial Times.) I found an old abandoned reel-to-reel tape recorder in a corner deep in the dark underbelly of Guildhall and really want to use it for the performance. Having finally got my hands on a fresh reel of tape (from a man called, amazingly, Stephen Hawking), I am now going to do some tests to see how it sounds...I could easily go the CD player route, but some annoying, nostalgic part of me wants to see and hear the plastic reels going round.
'Analogue is warmer', and all that.
Ed Finnis
Composer
The free concert is on Tues 30 October, 7.30pm, at Bishopsgate Institute
Check out details of the concert here
